


Fit for a Crown

by Toshi_Nama



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 10:43:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20704667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toshi_Nama/pseuds/Toshi_Nama
Summary: Bhelen is King of Orzammar, thanks to the Warden who, in Orzammar, had been less than nothing.  His son was the Warden's niece - and his love, the Warden's sister.  King Bhelen decides to spend precious power and influence for something for someone else - much to her surprise.





	Fit for a Crown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ead13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ead13/gifts).

She was just another noble hunter, Trian had said. Bhelen growled at his reflection since the traditionalist fool died as planned, and so wasn’t a target. Idiot. Caste-blind, and an ass to boot. Rica’d never been ‘just’ a noble hunter, no matter that he’d...well, he certainly had no complaints about her education.

“Bhelen?”

He smiled as she hurried into the room, even more beautiful than when he’d met her. She’d been wearing colored quartz and satin a size too small then. “Rica.” She snuck closer to get a kiss. “What do you want?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t have…”

_ Stone.  _ “No! No, I didn’t mean…,” he sighed. “It’s been a miserable few weeks, but I meant it. What do  _ you  _ want? Dresses? Jewelry? A few hours alone, a Proving in your honor?”

She flushed almost as red as her hair. “No. No, none of that.”

There was something, though. Unlike the Assembly and the gutless assassins they kept hiring, she didn’t put herself first. That was what made her so different. She’d not even become a noble hunter for herself, but for that waste of time Kalah and her sister. Then again, looking at Rica’s face, he wondered if Kalah had known his father more than he’d been willing to admit. The grandmother of his son - her nose was  _ just  _ like his sister’s, who’d been ‘a surprise’ from his mother. Not all surprises, he’d learned, were what they seemed.

“Rica,” he said softly. “You knew who I was, and I knew who you were.” Before she could start stuttering at his quiet voice, he kept going. “You’re a diamond. I’ll  _ make  _ the Assembly realize it, accept you as Queen.”

Her eyes widened. “That’s not possible!”

Little Endrin was asleep, so he dropped his crown onto the shelf and pulled her into a kiss. Everything had changed this last year, he realized. Trian gone, his sister gone (sadly), Father – oh, if Father had only cared, but he’d decided to believe the myths he’d had carved into the Memories rather than what Orzammar really was – killing himself in grief, little Endrin and Rica at his side, and then the last. The crown, a crown from a Paragon, and Harrowmont no longer spitting self-righteous poison into the ears of the Assembly.

None of that mattered for the moment: just Rica, as she leaned into his kiss, her hands already moving under his shirt. It was a good thing, Bhelen thought absently, that he needed his armor outside the private wing. Otherwise he’d  _ never  _ get any work done.

**

“You can’t marry a casteless woman.”

Bhelen closed his eyes and counted down the generations from Paragon Aeducan. By the time he reached the previous Trian, four generations ago, he thought he could speak without his teeth shattering. “I will.”

“She’s casteless! Rejected by the Stone!”

He leaned over the table. “Then,” he said casually, his thumb caressing his mace, “tell me how to fix that.”

The Shaper snorted. “You can’t.”

Bhelen stormed out of the Shaperate – he couldn’t risk alienating them. Not now.

**

“So, what do you say we make another son?” He’d meant it to be teasing at the end of the day – but now, she paled and stopped trying to unfasten the sapphire earrings he’d had made for her once he found some that were Warden blue. Given Orzammar politics - oh, he’d destroy anyone who tried to hurt little Endrin, but  _ he  _ could do better than his father. He could love more than one son. What he felt looking down at the squirming bundle - he  _ wanted  _ that.

Instead of answering, she shook her head, suddenly stiff. She wouldn’t even meet his eyes in the sodding mirror!

What had he said? “Rica? Rica, it’s alright if you’re still tired from Endrin’s birth... we can wait.”

No, that  _ still  _ wasn’t it.

“Talk to me,” he pleaded – something anyone but Vartag would be executed for seeing. “Please.”

Humbling himself around her was far easier than he’d admit, and more than that – it also  _ worked.  _ Rica might be a couple years older than him, but she’d never stopped melting just because he treated her like someone he was courting rather than a casteless hunter.

“Bhelen – what if I don’t have another son?”

“Then... we have Endrin and are happy with him?”

_ Now  _ she looked at him – at least, looked at his shoulder, her eyes shimmering. Bhelen’s stomach tightened. This was  _ not  _ right. “Bhelen...what if I have a daughter?”

A daughter? “Then we –” his voice stopped. Any daughter of his – wasn’t. Sons were his, but daughters would be  _ hers.  _ For all that the Deshyrs had to not insult her to her face as his consort, a daughter would carry  _ her  _ caste, not his. Would be branded, or worse. He knew what the Shaperate would say. A casteless infant in the palace? A sign of his ‘weakness?’

They’d expect him to force Rica to do the ‘honorable’ thing and ‘deal with it.’ Out of sight of the Memories, off in the Deep Roads. He tasted bile.

_ No child of mine will ever feel a brand. _

But – Endrin had had a ‘daughter’. The difference was that he had a  _ wife  _ who…

His sister.

_ His sister should have been branded. _

Was  _ that  _ what Harrowmont held over his father’s head? Was  _ that  _ why she and Trian had hated each other so much?

Bhelen shook himself back to the present. “No,” he said softly, hearing the ugly violence in his own voice and stroking Rica’s cheek so she’d know it wasn’t at her. “No child of  _ ours  _ will ever see a brand. No child of ours will be anything less than a Prince – or Princess.”

Was that...no. No, now it was time to figure out how to force the Shaperate into line. He couldn’t risk outright war with them, not so soon after claiming his throne…

His consort’s bitter laugh caught him off guard as she turned away. “What are you going to do, make me a Paragon? The last Brand who became an Ancestor was fourteen generations ago!”

She – yes, she’d know that. He’d forgotten about Gherlen. Somehow,  _ that  _ Paragon had faded, and something had happened to his House. They’d been absorbed or lost to the Surface, maybe? Either way, he grinned, unseen.

Only Vartag and Rica – and her sister – didn’t mind his grin. Well, they knew it wasn’t ever directed at them. “Rica, my love, you’re brilliant.”

Rica gasped. “You can’t make me a Paragon! I haven’t done anything!”

Oh, she’d done so much – she’d become one of the only advisors he could trust, even if she didn’t wear the title. “You have, but the Shaperate wouldn’t see it that way,” he acknowledged. “They don’t have to, though. What about a dwarf who almost single-handedly won the respect of a Paragon, and then went on to defeat a Blight and personally kill an Archdemon? Now  _ that... _ who would deny  _ that  _ dwarf is indeed blessed by the Stone?”

Her green eyes grew and grew as she stared at him, then laughed again. This time, it wasn’t acid, but something lighter. “That wasn’t  _ my  _ idea.”

“It was,” he insisted. “I get too caught up in how nobles and deshyrs do things. You’re the creative one.”

She shook her head again, but he got a kiss out of it. Forgiven, then – and more, the sadness in her face was gone. “She’s going to kill you.”

Bhelen laughed. “She can try. Make sure she remembers to adopt you – would she mind if it was house Brosca?” That way, it would be  _ their  _ House, even if he couldn’t force the Shaperate to realize.

Caste or no, Rica’d taught him more than the Assembly. The Assembly and his  _ dear  _ departed family taught him honor as something for public consumption but that politics ran darker. The woman in front of him had taught him about  _ people.  _

**

She giggled and rolled on top of him, the sheet twisting around her legs. “Bhelen!” Her voice was low. “How can you say that about Lord Dace?”

He shrugged lazily. “It’s true, and he’s an idiot.”

She looked closer. “He’s not, actually. I heard Beraht talking before. He said Dace actually believes that the Thaigs can be reclaimed. If he had a little more support – isn’t Aeducan Thaig only a few days away? That’s what he was doing there, or so Keris said when she went looking for him.”

“How do you know these things?”

Her eyes shadowed as she turned her head into his chest. “I’m casteless.” The two words said an entire history, and it was one that made him burn.

“Hey. Hey...Rica, you’re more than they realize.” He kissed her hair, swearing to make it right. “You showed me that. You noticed, didn’t you?” She was...if the Stone had rejected her, the Ancestors meant nothing. He couldn’t believe that. “I couldn’t have gotten here without you. You’re the one that pointed out what Jarvia was doing. You’re the one who found the papers on Harrowmont.” Whether those were true or not didn’t matter. Harrowmont had dissembled, and that meant  _ he  _ believed it. If those forged deals weren’t the proof, there was other proof out there. None of that mattered any longer, though; Harrowmont had been executed two days ago.

He couldn’t be the King he needed to with half the Assembly still uneasy, not without her at his side. He knew them, but she was the one who could find the information he needed to make it all work. Besides, she was older. She didn’t  _ get  _ insulted the way he did, didn’t have the Aeducan temper.  _ Please, Endrin, take after your mother. _

**

“What else is she?” Lord Dace finished up his hour-and-a-half argument. “The Paragon trusted Keris to make the decision – I inspected the crown myself. There was nothing to indicate anything other than trust. That means Warden Brosca couldn’t be casteless. A living Ancestor would not make a mistake like that!”

The Assembly seethed almost as badly as when Harrowmont had still been alive.

“Nonsense!” The Shaper stood. “A casteless is rejected from the Stone. Brosca, Warden though she is, is nothing more than that!”

This one, he needed to answer personally. Bhelen used an innocent voice that was a better warning than a shout. “Oh? Yet I remember you taking the evidence she provided to declare the Legion a House, Shaper. Could that have been brought and accepted into the Memories if it was from someone who had no place in the Memories?”

The Shaper paled. “That’s not...it’s because…”

He flicked an eye over. Lady Helmi’s usually-worthless son grinned back. “Or,” Dace said lazily, “maybe you saw something before we did, Shaper? The Shaperate trusted her, and their Stone sense is well-trained. The Paragon trusted her. Brosca resolved a conflict only a true dwarf could care about; Ancestors know the other Wardens stayed out of it all.”

Bhelen watched the calculation cross the Shaper’s face and thanked the Ancestors for Rica. If she hadn’t told him what she had about Dace, all of this would have been lost. That was an old family, and Lord Dace had the connections Trian had kept him from developing with the Deshyrs.

“You may have a point, Lords.” It was hilarious watching the Shaper, sixty years old if he was a decade, backpedal. “There has been one other time where the Assembly recognized someone born casteless was in fact a true Ancestor, though it has been centuries. That vote was unanimous, rather than the usual three quarters.”

It was an insinuation, not an instruction, but the Shaper’s intent was still quartz clear. Bhelen glared slit-eyed toward the suddenly-smug man, the Aeducan temper boiling. No. Rica’s voice whispered in the back of his mind. Plus, little Endrin. He swallowed his anger, burying it back under the calculation that had served him well. Then he stood for the first time to join the discussion. “Deshyrs of the Assembly, I ask you; did you follow the orders of a Paragon yet unrecognized, or that of a casteless thief, when you voted for your King?”

Revenge would come later. His children came first; his children, and Rica. She wasn’t a consort, she was a partner as trusted as Vartag. They  _ would  _ recognize that.

**

She bustled around their suite. “What do I need to pack?”

He watched and smiled. “You have clothes for the court, and your good sense. Here.” He handed her two small geodes. “It’s something my nana said,” he admitted sheepishly. “Better to bring the Stone with you, even if you have cause to go to the Surface.”

She kissed him. “Thank you, Bhelen. Oh! I can’t wait to see my sister again. She defeated a Blight, in less time than the Memories have ever recorded!”

Bhelen held her close. “Just make sure Keris remembers to adopt you into House Brosca,” he murmured. She pulled back, eyes wide. He nodded. “I told you before, I won’t have anyone else as my Queen.”


End file.
